Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

This is amazing to me. How stupid can people be with their money?

I have no sympathy for these players. They have received more money than 99.9% of the USA ever receives and are broke.

=====================

In a less public way, other athletes from the nation's three biggest and most profitable leagues—the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball—are suffering from a financial pandemic. Although salaries have risen steadily during the last three decades, reports from a host of sources (athletes, players' associations, agents and financial advisers) indicate that:

• By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

• Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.


<snip>

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/1/index.htm

If you get paid a million dollars a year for 10 years I can see how planning for the time after that would be really hard.

Not for me and I don't make a million a year.

As to "how stupid can some people be", remember - we're talking about athletes, perhaps the overall dumbest demographic in the world.

including not studying or larnin' nothin'.

Then they retire and realize that they have no skills, no education, nothing to fall back on... and go from $20 million a year income to nothing but keep up the lifestyle because they're too goddamn dumb to tie their shoes without the coach throwing them a fucking chart.

Youngness got nothin' to do with it.

Former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and ex-Maryland Congressman Tom McMillen, both basketball players, were Rhodes Scholars, as was former NFL quarterback Pat Haden.

Florida State University safety Myron Rolle is bypassing an immediate chance at a multi million-dollar contract in the National Football League to study at Oxford University.

Rolle, a three-year starter for the Seminoles, is accepting a Rhodes scholarship to study at the school in England, said his brother McKinley Rolle, who is managing Myron’s media appearances.

I fucking hate judgmental posts like yours.

The exception to your 'argument" was Myron Rolle who lasted 3 big months with the Titans who released him.

I fucking hate ignorant posts like yours.

I could do this all day. Apparently you'd agree with the notion that athletes are the single "dumbest" demographic there is. Keep believing that.

************

Ping Tjin Thum (Singapore & Hertford 2002)

Swimming

Represented Singapore at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.



Jen Howitt (California & St John's 2005)

Wheelchair basketball

Represented the United States at the 2004 Athens Paralympics, winning a gold medal. Current Assistant Coach for the British wheelchair basketball team that will compete in London 2012.



Tucker Murphy (Bermuda & Merton 2005)

Cross country skiing - 15km

Represented Bermuda at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, finishing in 88th place and carried the flag for Bermuda in the opening ceremony.



Rosara Joseph (New Zealand & St John's 2006)

Cycling - Mountain Bike

Represented New Zealand at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finishing in ninth place.



Mari Rabie (South Africa-at-Large & St Catherine's 2010)

Triathlon

Represented South Africa at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

These people often make more money in a year than many Americans will make in a lifetime, they are adulated, fawned over and treated like royalty.

If you make more in a year than many make in a lifetime you have no one at all to blame other than yourself if you're broke a couple of years after that income stops coming in.

But then I bet you knew that.

Now answer my question, why do so many of these mental giants end up broke a couple of years after a multi million dollar income stops?

Hey, since we're generalizing... I wonder how the stat in the OP breaks down according to ethnicity...

Seriously?

Pro athletes have money and connections that most of us will never know, the connections being more important than the money in the long run, their names open doors that you or I will never even know are there in the first place, wealthy and powerful people fawn over them and give them special deals.

Blowing it all on bling certainly doesn't seem terribly smart to me.

Breakdown by ethnicity would be quite interesting.

Though since you went back through time, I suppose we ought to up that to a few millions over the last century.

Had I said "All athletes are stupid", then your points would be a perfect rebuttal - I would have to change my stance to "not quite all athletes are stupid".

But, I said neither- I only said that athletes are one of the dumbest overall demographics.

Demographics, as in athletes, engineers, people who play Scrabble, Jeopardy winners, miners, traveling salesmen, choir singers, church goers, and so on and so on.

I'm sure that athletes, just like every groups, have their 5 and 6 sigma outliers. But I am saying that the top of the curve is skewed further toward the Origin than most.

We are talking about American (US) athletes in the three big-money sports.

again Batman, outliers are your only hope.

These guys were good athletes who also took their educations seriously and are less likely to piss their money away.

From "The Richest Man in Babylon"

Now I will tell thee an unusual truth about men and sons of men. It is this: That what each of us calls our "necessary expenses" will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.

That's right. It always seems that outgoes equal (or surpass!) incomes -- no matter how much the incomes grow. I've helped people who have made $20,000 a year and others who've made $150,000 and the problem is the same: their "necessary expenses" exceed their incomes.
The book goes on:
Confuse not the necessary expenses with thy desires. Each of you, together with your good families, have more desires than your earnings can gratify. Therefore are thy earnings spent to gratify these desires insofar as they go. Still thou retainest many ungratified desires.

Let's face it, most of us will still want "more" no matter how much we earn. So at some point you need to control your spending -- why not now?

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/04/the_richest_man_8.html

It would be interesting to have a list showing the average sq. ft. of their houses and how much their cars cost.

The Know Betters are in full froth.

"The Know Betters are in full froth."


Perfect!

They are targets for everybody with a hand out, including professional councilors.

Many are broke within a year, and almost all lottery winners say they wish they'd never won.

Sounds like he had a fairly steady personal life but he fell for every dumb investment scheme that came his way. Trying to be a venture capital guy without enough background in finance or business to know any better.

Yes, I'm sure there are some mitigating circumstances in individual cases and guys with poor families to support, but the large cause of this problem is just sheer carelessness and stupidity.

Fancy cars, boats, vacations, jewelery, multiple houses, stupid investment schemes, hookers at the Bunny Ranch and drugs.

Maybe it's a lot of guys who grew up poor now having the chance to indulge themselves in the things that they never had, but that does not excuse irresponsibility. With a little restraint, responsibility and sound planning for the future, you can still live a very lavish lifestyle on a pro athlete's salary.

I'd be willing to bet you that the players who finished college and took their education seriously fared better in retirement.

There was a discussion about NBA players as compared to NHL players a year or so ago here in the Twin Cities sports radio network. Evidently, NHL players do not go broke so readily as do NBA players. The biggest difference appears to be that Canadians, like so many international soccer players and other athletes, don't go to college. They spend their money far more wisely and do not succumb to the materialism that so many American athletes do. Because of this, they keep their money far longer. Thus all the more reason why people shouldn't go to college.

Read this book:
"PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine"

Review:
Based on eight years of research and unfettered access, Dorhmann details what he learned from his years spent embedded with a group of talented young recruits from southern California as they travel the country playing in elite Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) events. It’s a cutthroat world where boys as young as eight and nine are subjected to a dizzying torrent of scrutiny and exploitation. Coaches vie to have them on their teams. Sneaker companies ply them with free shoes and gear. All-star "camps" are glorified cattle auctions, providing make-or-break opportunities to secure the promise of an elusive college scholarship and a possible NBA career. Following a team of pre-adolescents from its humble origins through national championships and high school, PLAY THEIR HEARTS OUT exposes a shady system in which talent is a commodity even before puberty and where big business rules the day.

At the book’s heart are the personal stories of two compelling figures: Joe Keller, an ambitious AAU coach with a master plan to find and promote "the next LeBron"—thereby paving his own path to power and riches; and Demetrius Walker, a fatherless latchkey kid who falls under Keller’s sway at the tender age of nine and struggles to live up to the unrealistic expectations his supposed benefactor has set for him. As their fortunes take shape and the pressure mounts—Demetrius finds himself profiled in Sports Illustrated at age fourteen by a reporter who caught onto the hype, while Keller cultivates his business empire—Dohrmann weaves in the stories of numerous other parents, coaches, and players. Some of them see their prospects evaporate as a result of poor decisions and worse luck. Others learn how to thrive in a corrupt system by playing the right angles.

Written with incomparable detail and insight.
http://playtheirheartsout.com/

I am not an expert, but I keep up and watch kids ground up by the system whether it's in athletics or academics. I taught these kids although not as talented. They had dreams and hopes as big as the sky. I taught many in the 7th grade, and they had readying levels on par with the 1st grade. I would get so angry at times that I wanted to find the proverbial 'jawbone of an ass' and lay waste to everybody up the chain who let this happen. Unfortunately, my superintendent wouldn't let me borrow his.

Do the parents have some responsibility? You bet! I talked to a lot of them. Most were hard working snd had more than one job. Some had so any problems that their kids watched out or them. They needed a form of Headstart from the get go. That program if extended to younger kids could at least give them some more stability and more grounding in basic subject matter.

You can whine that this is a nanny state. Well, those kids are going to either make it out somehow or end up in trouble and cost society dearly. I told people to decide whether they wanted to build schools are prisons. Unfortunately, I have my answer now.

I am no angel by a long shot. I tried to help where I could. I had little concrete things to give them. I couldn't heat their homes or buy them clothes and school supplies. All I could do was listen to them, push them to keep trying their best, and not accept excuses for not trying.

FAILING was not the ultimate sin to me. NOT TRYING was. They knew that.

This country has failed and is failing its children so miserably that it is a mortal sin.
We build drones, meddle in every nation possible, and watch these kids sink further and further. Something is very, very wrong with our goals, our ethics, and our compassion. We are no more a Christian nation than Mars.

I could go on. I will remember a lot of the kids I taught until my dying day. They will haunt me forever, and I will always believe I could have done more.

... they start by signing kids less than 10 years old to play football (soccer). Nobody there worries about exploitation nor does anyone whine about how much better off such kids will be if they spend 4 years in college.

It's not the chances of a successful pro sport career that is ripping off so many kids. The real rip off is the college degree which ultimately will be found to be worthless by so many more kids. It may not be fashionable or politically correct to say it but it is the truth.

So I'm not surprised they're broke.